A Feather in Your Market Cap

Navigating global stock markets can be tough. Fortunately, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch’s number-crunchers have unearthed a welter of illuminating stats in their latest Hitchhiker’s Guide to global equities as tracked by MSCI’s All-Country World Index.

For instance: hands up if you were long Chinese technology stocks in 2013 and short South African materials companies? Congratulations, says BAML: you nailed the biggest winners and losers, with the former up 79.2% and the latter down 46.1%.

Meanwhile, the big gains for Japanese stocks in 2013 are overshadowed by the long-term picture. Japan’s 7.8% share of global market value is still close to a 20-year low and has declined from a peak of 45% in 1990.

There is better news for the euro zone: The currency bloc’s market value is above that of the emerging markets for the first time since February 2010, according to BAML. But it has a ways to go yet: despite comparable economic heft, the euro zone’s market value is still just 23% that of the U.S.